


The Untwining of Jared Kleinman

by amoment



Series: resolution and rekindling [2]
Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: (all the hours on my watch are labeled that way), M/M, gee jared how come your moms let you have two moms, if anything this is gonna be about evan earning jared back more than the other way around, i’m just writing this out wildly coz otherwise i won’t write at all ahgghg, kleinsen time......., one where jared hadn’t lied about the second base thing, trans jared btw
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-09-06 23:34:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16842664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amoment/pseuds/amoment
Summary: Jared is done with Evan. But it’s more difficult with Evan doing things like making phone calls now, apparently.





	1. he turns away

**Author's Note:**

> i was gonna make this ch. 2 of “the ghost of evan hansen” but actually i want that to be on its own. like that can be an ending point, or it can continue like this. choose your own adventure

One thing about Jared is that he laughs when he’s nervous. 

And a lot of things make him nervous, actually. When things are awkward or uncomfortable or even unsettling, he sometimes barks out a laugh or finds himself cracking up simply because of the tension of how inappropriate it would be to do so. If someone makes a comment that hits a little too close to home or starts to pry, Jared scoffs at them. And when Jared’s feeling this sense of pressure, he’ll go around with this little smirk tugging at his mouth, itching to burst into a grin at the slightest provocation, practically a tic.

And another thing about Jared is that he feels this pressure around pretty much anyone and everyone. School, camp, out in public, even sometimes at home. He’s hardly ever been able to feel completely at ease. Someone who’s nervous wouldn’t laugh, so of course he’s developed this nervous reflex to do just that.

Once when he was eight, he and Evan were at the poolside concession stand to buy ice cream, and they had been given five dollars but they forgot about the existence of sales tax until the cashier read out the total of five dollars seven cents. And Evan had spiraled so rapidly into this panic that he completely froze up, and before Jared could figure out what to do, Evan was outright crying. Jared was completely bewildered—all he could manage to do was sputter out a laugh. Evan looked over in time for Jared to see his expression crumple pathetically. Jared’s smile faltered and they stared at each other for a moment while the sight of Evan’s flushed face and shining tears and trembling mouth was burned into Jared’s visual memory bank.

Without a word to Evan, Jared had turned on his heel and run off to ask his mom for a quarter. He raced back and urgently thrust it out towards the cashier, then passed the change to a still-sniffling Evan in the hopes it might provide some kind of comfort.

In middle school, Jared had done tech. Lighting. And in sixth grade he’d actually found it kind of fun, even if he didn’t exactly fit in—the kids onstage and even backstage were good at forming this unit, an encompassing team, but never was Jared’s inability to summon true confidence more displayed than when he was with the group as a whole. There would be so many voices eagerly and boldly chiming in, loud and laughing, and there was no room for Jared’s snarky asides—there was scarcely space to keep up.

Yet that was far preferable to the situation that arose in seventh grade when a newcomer to the after-school theatre program took to hanging out in the lighting booth with a rotating handful of backstager friends. This boy, who Jared didn’t know at all, had at first mostly ignored Jared—who preferred to be alone when he was actually trying to focus anyways—until he started this new approach of sometimes following some random sentence with “right, Jared?” And Jared would glance up to see this slightly too-calculating look embedded in his smirking grin, and it was already obvious he’d been caught off-guard, and the other kids were already laughing—not quite meanly, but still too dismissive to let Jared avoid an unpleasant shiver in his gut. Of course, all that would happen was that his brain would scramble fruitlessly for a joke and his mouth would curve into a smile and he’d let out a nonchalant chuckle as if that was enough to convince them he wouldn’t recognize being the butt of the joke.

He should’ve figured this kid was the kind to test the waters and then push and push and push at the boundaries. Jared couldn’t say shit about what was going on—the guy had been accepted by the whole rest of the department, probably moreso than Jared the tech nerd ever had. And it was too late, anyways. The sly ribbing shed its ambiguity, making Jared himself into little more than a running joke. It pretended to be friendly teasing, Jared knew, but it got crueler, with this challenging undertone that dared him to stop playing along and reject what was supposed to be the friendly banter he now regularly got from about two-thirds of the drama kids. 

Most of them never meant it cruelly, and Jared didn’t really mind those cases—he could actually joke back, then. But it still reminded him of that one fucking guy, who was clearly trying to see how far he could take it, and was slowly dragging the rest of the group along. Jared’s laughter was always a little forced, even when it WAS kind of funny. But he always laughed, every time—even if it was merely one nasally grunt and half a smile to acknowledge the humorous intent. 

Jared kept up with the tech extracurricular through all the changes of middle school. Including the fact that, though he’d never been skinny, by eighth grade his stomach curved over the waistband of his pants and his thighs and upper arms were a little softer and overall it was more obvious that he was kind of heavyset. Jared hadn’t really consciously noticed the gradual weight gain over the past few years—at least, he hadn’t taken enough notice to warrant anything more than a momentary glance, a palm brushed over the convexity of his torso. To him it was just the body he’d always been used to, that everyone who knew him was used to—which left him completely undefended.

It was a one-two-three punch that came one innocuous Wednesday afternoon. The guy had been hanging out down in the seats a lot more often, and Jared had gotten more used to having the booth to himself more often than not. But that one Wednesday, there they were, chatting off in the corner by the door. 

Jared just had to pee, so he got up and walked past them.

Except a hand clapped down on his shoulder, and the fucking guy grabbed the fabric of Jared’s tee and twisted harshly at it. Jared flinched sharply and wrenched his shoulder away as he wheeled around. 

“Hey, sorry—just tryna find your training bra, Jarey.”

He might as well have been punched in the face. He stared, stunned into silence, scarcely able to distinguish the voices of the people around him. And all he did was turn away again and slowly walk out into the hallway on shaking legs. It had been so strange—he was sort of numb, his thoughts staticky, confused, eventually finding himself in a bathroom stall, head dropped and arms folding in, hands covering his shoulders, body shrinking towards itself.

Jared got through the production and then stopped doing tech, dropping the drama department entirely.

His main defense had failed him in a brutal way. So Jared learned from it. He needed to be sharper. Brasher. He needed to seem more untouchable. Unaffected by whether others liked him or not, and vice versa. The bitterness that settled into him after the incident drove the change along fairly steadily. He got graphic tees, so that anyone looking at his body would only be a participant in another of his jokes, and started adding a coordinated layer, flannels and jackets and unzipped hoodies. He looked better and distracted from himself at the same time—everything he wanted all his defenses to do. 

Even when Jared bewilderingly and infuriatingly had to get braces the summer before freshman year, forcing him to enter high school as a dorky, unpopular fat kid with a lisp, he only bore down harder. He’d be the one to speak to others before they could speak to him, dishing out snarky comments and deadpan observations, playing the self-aware nerd who could manage to avoid being targeted by any more jackasses with something to prove.

It actually pretty much worked. Sometimes a stumble would lead to a tense moment in which the reflexive smile and easy laugh were his initial attempt to defuse any conflict, and if that ever failed, he could simply leave. In fact, even when a group took to him, laughing along or at least accepting his presence, he still could simply leave. It was never a big deal whether he was there or not. Only Evan ever sought him out, talked to him regularly. But Jared’s laugh, nervous or deliberate or sometimes even natural, kept him safe.

The only reason he got kissed by a girl over the summer was because whenever they interacted he would just crack a joke because he had no idea what else to do, and she would laugh and make a joke of her own, which was a relief. And when they were alone in the lab that one afternoon, it was kind of funny in and of itself the way she suddenly leaned over and Jared tried to move out of her way before realizing with a burst of heat in his face that she was actually trying to kiss him. And he made this choked off noise in his throat that was a stifled laugh, and then SHE laughed, and he laughed, and her mouth was on his, and Jared knew it was very very important that he not completely fuck up this Kissing A Girl. He was about to be a senior. He needed to actually play it cool so he could get a good story out of this to take back to Evan. Because so far all he could think of that would be interesting was their capture the flag victory streak, and that alone would sound pretty sad.

He thought about ways to describe this encounter to Evan as the girl was kissing him, as he tried to kiss back as well as his somewhat limited knowledge and very limited experience allowed. When she took his wrist and set his hand on her stomach, he thought of how he’d get to tell Evan he got under a girl’s shirt, and then she pulled his hand under her shirt, and then she maneuvered his wrist up further while she leaned in and in a matter of seconds his fingers twitched against the fabric of her bra and he was trying very hard to multitask between that and the kissing and the thought of “holy shit, I guess now I get to tell Evan I got to second base,” and then when all he could think to do was tentatively cup his hand against the curve of her bra and try not to fall out of rhythm in the kiss, she once again reached up and took his hand and somehow maneuvered things so that his fingertips slipped beneath the top of the cup, and he felt that completely bizarre urge to laugh because he felt so out of his depth—almost like there was no way this could be real, happening to HIM.

But he just went with the flow of what she seemed to be going for and that’s how he ended up with her breast in his hand, telling himself that, yeah, he could start the school year off informing anyone who cared to ask (Evan) about this accomplishment. And part of him was sort of bemused, because he honestly wasn’t all that sure what this was supposed to be like, and it turned out that breasts were even softer than he thought they’d be and he really couldn’t think of anything to do but gently stroke his thumb across her very warm skin and sort of press in a little bit while she nipped at his bottom lip in a hopefully-positive response.

It was kind of nice, but for some reason it wasn’t a particularly transcendent experience. She might as well have guided him to touch her bicep or something. It didn’t seem all that intoxicatingly special the way it was surely supposed to. But he decided he wouldn’t mention that to Evan. And then they’d heard a door open down the hall, and quickly extricated themselves from each other and hurried to look otherwise innocently occupied in the large empty lab, and only when they heard the footsteps crescendo and then fade away did they look at each other and crack up.

Jared laughed when Connor Murphy decided that the right way to react to joking around was to flare up and bear down on Jared like he wanted to hit him. Someone who had been afraid of Connor since second grade wouldn’t dare to dismissively call him a freak, someone half-sure they were about to be attacked wouldn’t laugh and turn to casually walk away. It had taken Jared a solid five minutes to feel recovered from the momentary scare, the out-of-nowhere intensity of Connor’s expression still blazing at him in his mind’s eye. He could feel the thud of his heart and the reflexive smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

Jared had laughed when he found out Connor Murphy killed himself.

There was some secret being passed around at school that day; he could tell. People at across the room, heads together, expressions serious, murmuring intently. But Jared had never really been privy to the usual channels of prioritized gossip. He wasn’t on anybody’s need-to-know list, so he waited for it to hit classmates’ Twitters that evening, and—sure enough. 

By that point the rumor was practically being treated as fact. The first tweet he saw was sort of bafflingly vague, yet the implications were still concerning. He quickly backtracked to a few people’s accounts and scrolled to their tweets from earlier in the afternoon and there it was.

“omfgg sooo uh.... connor murphy died?????”

It felt like a suckerpunch right below the ribs. He sat up on his bed at once and gave this strange, breathless cough of a laugh. This cold frisson seized him and he immediately searched out more tweets from more people until it became clear this was for real. Zoe Murphy had been pulled out of class and hadn’t been seen since. Someone overheard something in the office. Saw the parents. And nobody had seen or heard from Connor. 

And someone, somehow, had gotten word that Connor killed himself.

Jared had quickly folded his laptop closed and for some reason there was a minute where it was like he couldn’t quite catch his breath. Like a hand had gripped his trachea and was twisting it up in its fist. He sat there staring at the desk before pushing himself up and going into the bathroom for the sake of proximity to the toilet. He was all clammy, it felt like his veins were buzzing, and the sense of internal strangulation continued.

He had leaned over the sink and stared at his reflection in an attempt to ground himself, trying not to think about Evan’s panic attacks and how they seemed to start out in a similar manner as this.

He told himself he wasn’t like Evan. Maybe that research he’d conducted into anxiety disorders years prior had occasionally unearthed unexpectedly relatable information, and maybe Jared had a lot of fears and worries and rarely felt comfortable or accepted around people, and maybe he sometimes had to lock himself in his room after a bad day and put on his headphones and play video games until he felt significantly less wound up and on edge, but he didn’t lose control like Evan did. 

He wasn’t like Evan, even if Evan had that nervous laugh response, too. Evan’s was always this weak and apologetic chuckle accompanied by a drop of the head and fidgeting hands, more directed at himself than anything else. Jared’s most nervous laughs were almost relaxed, as if he found everything around him absurd. 

But there, in the bathroom, with no one around, Jared couldn’t make a sound.

Connor Murphy.

Jared had gone to school with him since kindergarten. He’d never really known Connor—he didn’t think anyone really had—or, at least, by the time they were freshman, nobody who’d ever been friends with Connor seemed to be around or interested anymore.

But still: Jared had seen him nearly every weekday for the better part of twelve years. For the first couple of years, sometimes they’d even be part of the same recess games. Connor always seemed easily frustrated and upset, but it wasn’t enough to push anyone away until the printer incident. 

Nothing had really been the same after that.

Connor had killed himself. It was the first time this had happened to someone Jared knew directly. For twelve years. All at once, out of nowhere, he was dead. 

Maybe if it had been more of a surprise, Jared wouldn’t’ve felt this tightness in the chest. But one of the thoughts Jared couldn’t shake was that for all of high school he’d kind of seen Connor as the most likely candidate to pull shit like this. Except—in all Connor’s violent and antisocial behavior, his sullenness and solitude, the attitude like everyone was an annoyance or an enemy, Jared had sort of thought Connor might repeat the printer incident as something even worse, some angry outburst that had evolved along with Connor into something more unpredictable and destructive.

Someone who was at all anxious about this wouldn’t crack a joke about Connor’s school-shooter vibes, so Jared had.

And then Connor killed himself, and maybe Jared was kind of more surprised that he hadn’t taken out some of that on the rest of them. Maybe it had even been a close call, a tipping point that fell in their favor in a moment nobody but Connor had been privy to.

Jared had sat in the bathroom until he felt less cold and short of breath. He’d basically scolded himself out of the daze, telling himself he was only shocked at the fact that someone had killed themself. It happened. A senior had killed herself when Jared was a sophomore, casting a brief pall over the school. But Jared hadn’t known her, and he’d scarcely known Connor. It was just the loss of something familiar and the alarming strike of death—Jared knew this was hardly a tragedy. Not for them. Nobody had known Connor.

He was pretty much over it by the next morning, and had been utterly nonplussed by the random outpourings of grief cropping up in hallways and classrooms. He couldn’t pretend he was at all close enough to Connor to feel the loss as anything beyond a factual event, and he knew nobody else knew Connor any better. The crying and hugging going on grated on him, but it twisted at him too, the fact that he had no inclination to participate in this sentiment. He scoffed under his breath and rolled his eyes and overall tried to ignore it. When he found out about Sabrina Patel selling wristbands with Connor’s initials he dropped his head to the desk to stifle a cackle trying to bubble up his throat.

He’d figured Evan’s letter was a non-factor, and it was such a fucking absurd surprise to find out Connor Murphy’s parents now believed Evan was Connor’s secret intimate penpal, and Evan had been unable to refute this in an onset of anxiety that Jared could imagine effortlessly. And now he was talking to Jared about having to have dinner with the family who believed Connor had actually had a friend, someone who juxtaposed so dramatically against Connor’s angry, violent persona. He couldn’t help but laugh again and again and again. Evan, of all people.

Evan, of all people, was the first since the grip on his shoulder to leave Jared defenseless. 

For the rest of the school year, Jared was too bitter and depressed to be nervous or give a shit about what other people did or might do. The nervous laugh disappeared, and the rest of his laughs were briefer and more biting. He was determined to march his way through the rest of the high school days and get graduating the hell over with. And so that’s what he did.

When he went away to college, he found that his default social approach was still to casually joke around and wait for other people to show that they liked him. He could tell he was more subdued than he’d used to be. His attitude that he didn’t quite care either way what people thought of him wasn’t completely faked anymore. But at the same time, he was more similar to the way he’d been prior to Evan’s betrayal. It turned out that not having to share a school and a town with Evan meant that he could relax a little. And, somewhat counterintuitively, this meant his nervous laugh was back. It was softened by an increased cautiousness, but the lightened weight of losing Evan meant there was more room for Jared to take advantage of a totally new environment and location and situation and population.

Coming home for the summer has been a lot better than the summer after graduation. Jared’s kind of at ease. It’s incredible not worrying about homework and reading and projects and tests and finals, though on the other hand, for possibly the first time ever since like age eight, Jared doesn’t really feel stressed about the idea of going back in September. He’s maybe even kind of possibly looking forward to it a little. 

The night of the first Wednesday of August, Jared works from nine in the evening to six in the morning, drags himself home, stays up for a few more hours to eat and dick around online, and then rolls into bed at around ten to pass out awhile. 

He’s woken up once when his mom’s sister stops by to pick her up for an afternoon out and their talking and footsteps happen to rouse him. But he just rolls over onto his opposite side and draws the blanket up further and sighs and drifts off again in a matter of minutes.

When he next wakes, he’s so liminally conscious that it takes a minute for him to process the fact that the knocking isn’t a dream. He lies there in a haze, and then the doorbell rings, so he groans and pushes himself up. He shoves on a grey pair of sweatpants, manages to find his glasses, and blearily makes his way to the door to scribble out a signature for whatever delivery this is.

As soon as the door has opened an inch he realizes that this is not at all the situation. But it’s too late.

“H—“ Jared exhales. “...Hi.”

“Jared, oh,” Heidi says. She looks genuinely surprised to see him. “I’m sorry, I saw your mom’s car in the driveway and I just stopped by to—“ She pulls something out of her pocket. “When we were out at lunch yesterday I ended up with her checkbook in my purse and I swung by to give it back. I’m sorry. I thought she was home.”

Jared’s known Heidi basically all his life, and he knows that when she’s not sure what to do, she defaults to this friendly cheerfulness. Not totally unlike Alana. Jared scratches at his neck and ducks his head as he takes the checkbook from her, unable to look her full in the face.

He lets out one of those rough breaths of a laugh. 

“Thanks,” he says.

He wonders how desperate Heidi is to get out of this interaction already. He wonders what Evan’s told her about him. He knows she knows something happened between them—the complete lack of contact has gone on for a good year and a half. And unless Evan’s told her the full story behind this, Heidi probably hates him for ditching her otherwise friendless son. Hell, she’d probably be mad at him even if Evan DID tell the whole story.

“...How was, uh, did you like your first year of college?” she asks.

Jared is shifting his weight from foot to foot, wishing he hadn’t just rolled out of bed, wishing this wasn’t happening. It’s kind of horrible to be seeing her again. Wounds that are only recently healed over are opening up again at the sight and sound of her. And he’s missed her, too. She was sort of like a third mother to him. And she didn’t do anything to hurt Jared. It’s just that her allegiance has to lie fully with her child. She’s all he’s got.

“Yeah,” he says, louder than he expects. “It’s, uh, it’s good. Sorry.”

He knows he’s already blushing but he blushes harder. Heidi laughs lightly and good-naturedly.

“Don’t be sorry—I’m sorry to drop in on you without warning.” She laughs again. “I thought your mom was home.”

Jared nods and grips the checkbook tightly. He doesn’t want to be mean to Heidi and make her think he’s angry at HER, but he doesn’t want to mention Evan, the elephant breathing down their necks. He doesn’t know what to say.

“...Have you been okay?” he finally asks. “Are, like, your classes okay?” He even manages to lift his eyes to meet hers. 

“Oh, yep, they’re going smoothly! Things are settling down at work, too, so I might even be able to get my degree after next year, which would be a bit of a time crunch but—“ She gives this little sigh with a bright smile, a behavior he’s grown completely familiar with over the years. “I’d love to have it all in order.” She nods vaguely to herself as she speaks. 

Jared nods back.

“Yeah. Uh.” He instinctively tugs the hem of his shirt down. “I’m...glad that things are good.”

“Me too, honey. It’s good to see you.”

Jared’s smile is automatic, but it’s partially genuine too. 

“Tell your moms I say hi,” Heidi says.

Jared laughs and immediately hates that he did. Come on.

“Yeah,” he says.

“Alright, well...” Heidi takes a half-step back, taking the lead on ending the conversation. “I’ll see—have a good—good Thursday, Jared.”

“Ha. Thanks. You too.”

She smiles and gives a little wave as she turns and walks back to the driveway. Jared stares at the back of her head for a few moments, then closes the door and squeezes his eyes shut.

He leaves the checkbook on the kitchen table and trods back to his room. In a delayed reaction, his pulse is now banging against his chest. All the memories he’s been determinedly ignoring are flashing through his head. Heidi, Evan, Heidi, Evan, Evan, Evan, Evan Evan Evan Evan Evan Evan—

He drops back onto his bed, shoving his face into his pillow.

He falls asleep surprisingly fast.

Jared is sitting at his desk with his laptop when his phone vibrates and rattles against the bedstand behind him. Jared pulls off his headphones and swivels the chair around, prepared to see “work” shining from the screen and hit ignore and toss it onto the foot of his bed. 

Evan.

No fucking way.

Evan Hansen has never made a phone call to Jared once in their lives.

He texts, he IMs, if things are really especially urgent or else if he’s doing especially great he’ll video chat, preferring to see your face while you talk. He never calls.

Jared’s glare intensifies as the phone continues and continues to buzz. About a dozen expressions are tugging at his features; his lips and eyebrows twitch, he shifts his jaw forward to line his teeth up. He grips the arms of the chair and raises his shoulders.

Finally the phone is quiet. Jared sits there, immobile, still staring it down. If Evan has the audacity to leave a voicemail...

But the fact that five minutes go by and no notification appears is somehow even more unbelievable.

What.

The FUCK.

Evan Hansen calls him, when he’s never called him before, when they haven’t spoken since Jared’s parting words in senior year, when Jared has spent so long hurting and getting over him. And then he just fucking hangs up?

Jared would’ve been furious either way, sure, but where the hell does Evan get off thinking he can do something like this and not even bother to offer whatever inadequate explanation he has for this shit. 

On angry impulse, Jared grabs his phone and turns it off. He wants to throw it across the room. He wants to leave it off for a solid week. 

He’ll be damned if he has to cry over Evan Hansen again.


	2. the truth enshrined in his hands and mouth

Disappointment is an art form, the way Jared’s parents wield it. A lifestyle. Jared wants to say it’s probably what they first bonded over when they met.

He can’t really say that though, because he was too young to be all that aware of anything back then. Apparently his dad left when he was one, so as far as Jared’s concerned he’s never had a dad. The abandonment isn’t an issue for him like it was for Evan—basically a “you can’t miss what you never had” type deal. And then his mom met his ma about a year later, quickly grew close and started dating a year after that, and married just before he turned five. And god knows when they synchronized this technique for guilting Jared into good behavior. He has to say he really felt the effects by the time he had the increased self-awareness of his eight years of age. They could summon this capital-D Disappointment that filled the air of the whole house and was more impactful than their anger could ever be. It just always felt so fucking genuine. Like he’d really hurt them.

Jared had kind of learned the protective virtue of lying without meaning to. It just happened naturally. If he was playing video games and got asked if he did his homework yet after getting A Serious Talk about incomplete assignments, he’d just lie and say he’d gotten started on some of it already. He’d still get raised eyebrows to say “don’t make us give you another Serious Talk,” but it would buy him time to actually get started and avoid any immediate trouble. He WAS going to do it anyways, so it didn’t really matter if he just told them what they wanted to hear. He was still going to do what they wanted him to do.

By middle school it was such an instinct that he’d tell lies about things he had no reason to lie about. Try to cover up things there’s no way they’d get mad at him for. It was just precautionary. It didn’t matter either way—and Jared really hated those talks. He hated feeling like he was hurting his moms, and he hated starting to feel like he really WAS a disappointment.

At times he’s kinda wished they had other kids so that they wouldn’t pin all their expectations on him.

He knows they love him—even that they love him the way he is. Hell, they legally changed his name for him when he was only seven. He’d loved the name Jared from this once-mentioned character in his favorite books, and he loved being called Jared all the time, and it didn’t take him long after starting school to figure out he’s a boy. And his moms, thank fucking god, accepted this completely. They never fought him on it. They let him be Jared.

Their version of the puberty talk was mostly about asking him if he wanted blockers and HRT. He hadn’t even been aware this was an option, and when his moms approached him one day with FAQ pages they’d printed out and doctors they’d listed down and told him about this choice available to him, Jared had sort of done a lot of crying and hugging and, if nothing else, the fact they did that for him and the way they supported him is evidence that, yeah, they must love him through all the disappointment.

But, god, Jared’s just so disappointing.

They hadn’t been very happy about his sudden loss of interest in doing anything for the theatre department anymore. It’d frustrated him that he couldn’t tell them why without disappointing them further. He didn’t want to admit he’d felt like he’d been misgendered by what was just meant to be this fat joke—which was also bad enough on its own—because he’d already long sensed this quiet tension around the matter that told him they’d try to turn it into an opportunity to imply that Jared COULD lose weight. They were Like That about it: gently pressuring him out of what he’s sure was meant to be concern for his own wellbeing, the belief that he’d be happier, things would be better and easier for him. He’s always been sure they mean well, but he just wished that wholehearted, unconditional acceptance they’d had over him being a boy extended to this, too. He was okay with his body, even though, yeah, he hated the way other people tried to make him feel like shit for it. The thing is that, when they succeed, he can’t ever really depend on his parents to make him feel otherwise—by high school he’d acquired a preference for eating in his room or anywhere else he wouldn’t feel like he was being silently monitored and judged, and he had the habit of going to the gym just to make them happy, when really he’d just sit and finish pre-calc homework and fuck around on his phone and take a shower before driving back home.

And he also didn’t want to tell them that, in all the time he’d been involved in the theatre department, he hadn’t made any real friends. Not the kind who could be counted on to stand up for him, anyways. Because he’d already gotten the lectures on how he wasn’t approaching other students the right way, wasn’t being nice enough, wasn’t going to make any friends by teasing and being unfriendly, and Jared hated it. HATED it. He’d already known by that time that nobody really liked him, except for Evan. He couldn’t figure out how to explain that being snarky and protecting himself with biting comments that made others laugh was the one way there was a chance that anyone would respond positively to him. 

They just would’ve said that if he’d try being a little nicer, he’d find himself with better friends. That, really, Jared should learn from this, because it was proof that always joking around wasn’t always the way to go and it could really hurt people’s feelings. Which would just make Jared feel shittier, because for one thing, the shit he did wasn’t the same as what the other kid did to him. And because Jared KNEW that sometimes he was too mean, that sometimes it wasn’t taken as Just Jokes, and he’d feel bad, and then feel worse when it wasn’t enough to make him stop because it was such a fucking engrained reflex. Apparently his compassion wasn’t as strong as his desire to protect himself, to try to gain at least a few people’s acceptance by making them laugh, to convince people he wasn’t half as nervous about all this as he was. He’d feel bad, and then nothing would change, because knowing his own comfort sometimes came at the expense of others apparently wasn’t enough.

And then, of course, that one shitty incident made him sharper and quicker to snipe at anyone who might turn on him and even more determined to seem like he doesn’t give the least damn about whether anybody likes him or not. 

He never could explain to his parents why he was too damn scared to be nicer. They’d’ve let him talk and they’d nod along and then they’d tell him why he just needed to Be Totally Different anyways and it wouldn’t matter if Jared said he couldn’t because then they’d get frustrated with what they just saw as stubbornness and they’d get Disappointed. And Jared would hate himself and get frustrated too and they’d get even more Disappointed at his frustration and he’d have to go retreat to hide in his room and distract himself with something in an attempt to interrupt the looping self-hatred and hatred of everyone else and certainty that he was always going to be less than what his parents or anybody wanted of him. 

Back when Evan’s dad left, his mom had started specifically telling Jared to be nice to him. Like, reminding him way too often, too pointedly, like the way he was already Evan’s friend wasn’t good enough. Like the way he already cared about Evan was invisible to her, and to Evan, and to everyone. Like she thought he’d stop being Evan’s friend if she wasn’t suddenly telling him not to. He resented it. But at least it had sort of stopped for a while as the crisis smoothed over—or maybe as it became obvious Jared didn’t need the reminders. Except it came back when the lighting booth problem made Jared harsher and then the dreams made him periodically avoidant of Evan and meanwhile Evan’s anxiety was getting worse and he was really starting to socially struggle on a new level, and suddenly the parental pressure to keep being a good friend to Evan was back.

Jared was pretty sure he didn’t know how to be a good friend, because nobody ever fucking liked him and the best he could hope for was defending himself from being targeted for derision which he knew was so, so likely to be levelled at himself, and he really didn’t want to keep hearing that his moms expected him to ditch Evan, because Evan was like, the one person he knew and liked and who knew and liked him. He thought. Or maybe Evan was telling Heidi that Jared didn’t like him anymore and maybe NOBODY was capable of reading Jared and he really was completely alone. 

It had seemed especially unnecessary when his parents had told him they’d pay for his car insurance, but that it was contingent on his behavior. Really, Jared would rather have just paid for it himself, and it was clearly so vague that anything could be leveraged against him, which annoyed him, and he was also annoyed that he hadn’t even DONE anything lately, and of course they mentioned being nice to Evan, and Jared just hated that apparently it didn’t matter that he liked Evan because nobody seemed to notice or maybe his moms just thought he was incapable of being nice or caring about anyone because they really did give that impression sometimes, that they were Disappointed in the way he was, in his less-than-warm demeanor, his evasiveness, his dependency on jokes and sarcasm to control the way attention was focused on him, deflecting it and drawing it in at the same time. 

It had bothered him so much that he kind of started to play along with it out of sheer bitterness. Like, okay, if everyone thinks I’m so awful, maybe I am, maybe I might as well lean into that. And it didn’t help that Evan was getting this weird fixation on a girl he’d never talked to, and Jared’s then-unidentified crush was building up some steam, and Evan was starting to act all depressed about the fact that Jared was his friend. He’d have these days where he got all mopey and complain that Jared was his “only friend” in this tone that made it clear that was just horrible, and the more he said Jared was his only friend the more it felt like Evan was saying that Jared being his only friend was the ONLY reason Jared was his friend. 

Jared wanted Evan to say that he wanted Jared. But sometimes Evan just seemed resigned to Jared’s company, or else forced to turn to him whenever he needed someone because he had no other options. Sometimes, sometimes, everything seemed real and almost open between them, as easy and natural as when they were first-graders. Times like when they’d be sitting in Jared’s room on some Saturday night, staying up late and drinking, and hit this point where they were just making each other laugh and laugh and laugh and Jared felt so light and like he really belonged with Evan and like things were going to be good. Or like when they’d find themselves sitting in the quiet relief that settled over them after one of Evan’s worse anxiety attacks finally ebbed, and Jared just sat beside him and finally rested a hand on his back and they just shared this quiet moment, doing nothing more than breathing and sharing each other’s presence. And best of all, the unexpected times that seemed to spring up at random when working on some group project or hanging out in the school parking lot or going on a spontaneous late-night walk for snacks and things would just be...fun and natural and almost kinda warm. 

Even with the family friend / only friend issue, Jared kept liking Evan, and kept slowly realizing that it wasn’t just something casual or superficial. He liked the messier, less pleasant sides of Evan, and he liked that he got to see them. He even kinda liked how Evan could be a jerk. Evan didn’t show other people he was a jerk—only Jared got to see that. Evan could be just like him: rough, bad-tempered, selfish, kind of an asshole. And Jared kind of fucking loved that. It was such a relief. And Evan was kind of funny, even sometimes on purpose.

When it all went to shit, Jared had spent weeks waiting for his moms to drag him into a Disappointment Talk. He’d been doing better than usual, too, impressing them by sending out three applications, getting accepted by them all, letting them know he’d agreed to be treasurer for this extracurricular group that he kind of didn’t specify because that would be a whole thing he didn’t want to get into, generally getting good grades, totally entering the phase of senior year where nobody complained about him because he was just coasting towards the finish line. 

And Jared figured he was coasting along just fine, too, but he hadn’t planned on Evan fucking Hansen and his own stupid broken heart. His mood had truly been godawful for a solid week and a half—angry and on edge and sullen at the very best, until finally it kind of crumbled a little into a hazy, depressive melancholy with a healthy touch of bitterness. He wholly expected his parents to either lose patience with his mysterious bad-temperedness or else try to pry into it out of concern, but because parents were completely unpredictable mysteries, they gave him space. He didn’t even get the sense that they were circling him, waiting a certain amount of time before moving in for the strike. Somehow they never asked. Even when it went on for so long that they HAD to know. His mom was still meeting up sometimes with Heidi. Unless Evan had the same kind of luck hiding it all, they HAD to know. And after all these years of pressuring him to stay friends with Evan, Jared knew it was just a matter of time before being slammed with a special apocalyptic Disappointment Talk. 

He didn’t let his guard down over the summer. He even vaguely expected to get an ominous phonecall while he was away at college. But nobody said a thing. 

Not like the pressure wasn’t there anymore. When he’d first got home for the summer, he took a solid ten days off, then went back to work at twenty hours a week. Except that after a few pointed remarks he caved like he always did and bumped it up to thirty hours a week. But it wasn’t that awful. There were shittier jobs. Or, at least, shitty jobs that left you alone less. Things were fine. Coasting along the way they were supposed to. 

Until, you know.

Jared does his best to casually breeze through the explanation of how his mom’s checkbook manifests on the table. He pretends to be reading a text on his phone as he talks, trying to pretend he’s distracted both as a way to hide his blush and to give himself an excuse to slip out of the kitchen and into his room. Luckily, his mom accepts the whole thing without much concern, and Jared drops onto his bed and wishes he really WAS texting someone.

There’s a couple muted group chats he’s technically a part of, and there ARE people he’s texted a handful of times over the summer, but it’s not like he picked up any new best friends over his freshman year. There WERE some people he liked hanging out with and who seemed to be fine with hanging out with him, but it was never the kind of deal where they’d talk to each other that much when they weren’t already in the same place. 

It’d all been kind of different, anyways. Jared was still kind of feeling like shit over what had happened back in his senior year, and he was more scared than excited for college as it approached, and when he got there it turned out his new strategy for socialization was basically just to shut up. And he really didn’t have anything to worry about, because in college nobody gave a shit. When you weren’t all cooped up in the same building for like nine hours every day and everybody had different classes and you could basically do whatever you felt like, there was a lot less of a need for everybody to be assholes to each other. Jared’s almost-sort-of relative quietness meant that absolutely nobody had a problem with him.

But it turned out that when Jared talked and joked, nobody was really interested, and when Jared just kept the hell to himself, nobody was really interested either. 

Now, though, he sort of wishes he could vent to somebody. Evan’s phonecall is stressing him the hell out, if only because he doesn’t understand it at all. At ALL.

He knows he can’t just complain about it on his twitter. If he strips the story of any incriminating details, it’ll be a boring, confusing rant that’ll embarrass him forever even if he only has, like, forty followers. And no way in hell is he naming names. He’s even momentarily considered the “anonymous post in a thread asking for advice” route, but the boringly vague / damningly specific dilemma is just as big an issue, and he doesn’t really want ADVICE. He just wants a listener. Someone to know about what he’s feeling, and care. 

God.

He’s just going to ignore it. It doesn’t matter why Evan is pulling shit like this. It happened, and it’s over, and it fucking sucks, but Jared’s just going to...keep going. 

Except the next evening their landline rings, and Jared’s stomach drops. He listens to his ma get up from the kitchen table to answer it, and he looks at the clock, and it’s seven—about the same time Evan called just yesterday. His breathing starts to get heavier.

“Jared?” His ma taps on his door.

“Yeah?” he says tersely.

“It’s for you, hon.”

Jared half-stands up from his desk chair, then drops back down.

“How...who is it?” he asks.

A small pause. Jared already knows. God.

“It’s Evan.” She’s definitely infusing her tone with a certain level of gentleness. It’s making this feel even more horrible.

“I—okay—I-I—“ 

Wait, what is he even doing. 

“I’m not gonna take it,” he says, trying to keep his voice from sounding choked. “Tell him I’m not—I’m not available, or whatever. I’m not taking it.” His voice is rising already.

“Jared—“ 

It’s that “I’m about to work my way towards guilting you into this” tone that he really hates to hear, now more than ever. He tries to put “there is no fucking way I’m budging on this” into his own tone.

“I’m not taking it.”

There’s another slight pause, a slight sigh, and a slightly wearied “Alright.”

This tension Jared hadn’t been fully processing releases him suddenly and he pulls his glasses off, shoves them aside, and sinks face-first down to the mattress. He screws his eyes shut and folds his arms over the back of his neck as if to protect it, and he tries to stop breathing so hard and wishes his heart wasn’t thudding in his ears, and shifts his forehead against the blanket like he can burrow down into it and hide from all this.

What the fuck what the fuck what the FUCK DOES EVAN THINK HE’S DOING. 

What is WRONG with him and why can’t he leave Jared the hell ALONE.

The soft tap at his door again. Jared jolts upright with a gasp. 

“Uh—ye-yeah?” he stammers. 

“Jared?” His ma is definitely using her softened, sympathetic voice for him.

“Yeah,” he repeats cautiously.

“Are you alright?”

Jared takes a couple deep breaths and runs a hand through his hair to smooth it out a little. He glances nervously in the mirror. Goddamnit but his face is totally flushed down to the neck; he could hardly look worse if he’d been crying. 

“...Yeah.”

He sighs and sits on the edge of the mattress, elbows braced on his knees, staring down at the floor. 

Why the fuck is this happening to him. 

It’s been over a year and a half. Why NOW. Why did Evan CALL, of all things, not even leave a message, then call AGAIN on their house phone? Was he trying to get Jared’s parents involved? Had something happened?

It HAS to have something to do with Jared encountering Heidi. It’s way, way too big a coincidence. But it’s not as though anything happened. He couldn’t have given Heidi anything to report back to Evan that could’ve prompted this. What the HELL is Evan trying to pull.

Jared feels way, way too much like his high school senior self. Evan is wrenching him back to that place. The horrible, drawn out period of dragging heartache and betrayal and bitterness and the realization that not only had the boy he was in love with failed to come after him—Evan was never GOING to come after him. He’d never mattered to his only real friend. 

Evan didn’t deserve to DO this to him anymore.

Evan didn’t get to fucking come after him now. 

“Jared?”

“Shit—“ He flinches. He’d forgotten she was there. Thought she’d walked away. “Yeah. Hang on.”

Clearly she wants a moment face-to-face to assess the situation; the sooner he lets this happen the sooner it’ll be over with.

He glances at the mirror on his way past. Shit.

He opens the door a little and puts a hand on the wall, blocking off the inside of the room.

“Hey, ma,” he murmurs. “...M’sorry.”

She’s frowning down at him, but he can tell this isn’t Disappointment. Their expertise in THAT means the accompanying expression is utterly precise every time. This is, maybe, confusion? Which is frankly just as bad. He can’t have them prying. He can’t have them trying to step in and change things around for him.

“Are you alright? Really?” 

Jared nods. 

“...I know you’re upset.”

This only makes Jared’s face heat up some more. He glances up at the join of the wall and the ceiling. He scratches at the side of his nose in answer.

“Do you want to talk about it?” 

Fuck. Her sympathetic voice is way too much to deal with right now. Jared is going to die if this is enough to make him cry over Evan again. He’s already done far more than his fair share of that. He deserves for this to finally be OVER. 

“...It’s okay,” he says, voice a little closer to its usual volume. “It doesn’t...it’s not really important.”

He sees her expression shift—it’s still that gentle, concerned grimace, but it’s taken on the searching quality, trying to find answers in his own expression.

“...You and Evan haven’t been talking for a while,” she says, like an observation.

He figures his parents have known since the spring before his high school graduation, but every instinct to tell them what he knows they want to hear has kept him quiet. And it’s still telling him that. But it’s also always told him that a key part of lying is not OBVIOUSLY lying. Which this would be.

“...Yeah,” he concedes, voice low.

“Did something happen?”

Fuck this day. 

“...Sort of. It’s been a while. It’s over.”

He’s pretty sure it’s over. He doesn’t know what’s going on with the project. Evan could be calling about that. Alana posted Evan’s clearly-intensely-personal letter, maybe something about HIM has been posted too, and Evan needs him to know. Even though he doesn’t think there’s anything like that floating around that anyone would care about, part of him has always been worried about whether or not his involvement in the project (and abandonment of it) would come back to bite him in the ass. 

Plus, Evan seems to be trying to make it Not Over, whatever his motivation for it. And the feelings this is dredging up are already scraping at the inside of his ribs. 

It was bad enough yesterday. Now, part of him is even a little scared.

But he can’t talk about this. Nobody knows this part of him. He doesn’t want to see how they’ll react to it.

“...I just don’t want to talk to Evan.” He stares at the wall. “I just...we aren’t talking anymore. ...And it isn’t really okay that he’s trying to talk to me again.”

His ma takes a deep, slow breath.

“We’ve guessed that something happened between you two,” she says, her words and tone measured, careful.

Jared’s sigh is a little too heavy to be called a sigh. 

“You’ve known him so long, honey,” she says. Here it comes. The guilting. “...Did something happen that...that someone needs to know about?”

Oh. Maybe not the guilting just yet.

“No,” Jared answers. “It’s okay.”

“You’re...how long has it been since you two were friends?”

Fucking hell, he’d just been beginning to relax about this.

“...We haven’t talked since before graduation,” he admits. 

There’s a long pause, and Jared is trying to strategize a way out of this conversation, but his head is still all tangled up with Evan and his calls, and there’s only so much he can manage.

“...And you’re sure you don’t want to talk to him?” She’s saying it that slightly knowing tone, and it’s tangential to the about-to-try-to-guilt-you tone. 

Jared can’t even touch on the fact that Evan broke his stupid heart. He can’t elaborate on the way he was used and taken for granted. His parents were apparently never able to grasp that he even cared about Evan as his friend. And they certainly don’t know he helped Evan write up this lie about being friends with the guy in their grade who offed himself. 

“We don’t talk anymore,” he says slowly. “That’s all.”

It’s kind of dismissive, and he’s already bracing himself for the onset of the Disappointment. 

What happens is that his ma slides her hand around the back of his head and softly strokes his hair. Jared stills completely, and is only just able to prevent his expression from crumpling. 

“If you ever want to talk to US about this,” she says, “we’re here for you, Jared. For anything.”

He can manage a tiny nod.

“Your mom and I love you, Jared,” she adds, and god but this isn’t disappointment at all. This is that rare and crushing Acceptance.

He nods again, head bowed, staring at the floor.

“Um...” His voice usually isn’t this quiet. “What did you say to Evan?”

She rests her hand on his shoulder.

“I told him you weren’t home,” she says.

Oh god. That means he might think it’s okay to try again.

“What’d he say?” he asks before he can help himself. 

His ma squeezes his shoulder gently.

“He didn’t leave a message or anything, if that’s what you’re wondering. He just sort of...well, you know how he talks when he’s nervous. All spilling out at once and then suddenly a ‘goodbye.’”

Jared really can imagine it so easily. 

He bites his bottom lip, a nervous tell that’s always exacerbated by his overbite. 

“Okay,” he says. “Thanks.”

“...You promise you’ll talk to one of us anytime you need to, Red?”

He hesitates, but nods again.

“Our boy.” She says it with such fondness, like he’s done anything—been anything—to be proud of. She takes his head in her hands and kisses his forehead. 

If Jared was feeling any better he’d think about being embarrassed, a nineteen year-old incoming college sophomore who needs his moms to help him feel better after his ex-best-friend makes a couple of calls. But he’s feeling really shitty, so it’s just kind of nice.

They look at each other a moment, and she’s stroking his cheekbone with one thumb, and god she must know he’s a mess over this because his moms don’t just DO this kind of thing. Each time they do is like a special occasion, and half the time makes him feel like a liar as much as when he’s trying to avoid their disapproval and disappointment. 

With one more reassuring smile, his ma draws away and heads back down the hallway. 

Jared blinks and remembers he took off his glasses. 

He goes directly to the bathroom and sits through a hot shower til he’s brave enough to reemerge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i keep making accidental references that i only realize in retrospect after learning something new
> 
> god i hope this doesnt have any glaring errors but since this is an end note its too late if it does. i also hope that i did basic math right if jared was 17 in the first part of his senior year and probably turned 18 sometime in the second half


	3. his own splendor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can you believe this has jared reflecting at length upon evan via a certain framework (his messy gay awakening) for a long time and then some stuff happens?
> 
> i keep realizing these accidental references. wasn’t trying to invoke mitb at the time but i accept it...wasn’t trying to refer to will roland doing lighting tech but i accept it...wasn’t trying to refer to the setting of “the bus” but hey. i accept it

Jared composes himself by making homemade hot cocoa. It’s irrelevant that it’s a warm August evening. He likes shaving the chocolate and measuring the delicate amounts of additional spices and flavorings to add, and he’s always steadied by the warm ceramic in his hands and the heat of the drink radiating through him from the inside out. He drinks it slowly and he thinks hard about the situation he’s in.

It doesn’t take him too long to make a conclusive plan—maybe he’s grown since high school or some shit. What he decides is that if Evan keeps coming after him, he won’t be able to remain completely passive in this. Hell, he’s already reacted to Evan by refusing his phonecall. Maintaining Evan’s absence didn’t use to take any effort on his part, but now that Evan’s trying to get in touch with him, Jared’s going to have to actually TRY to avoid him. Ignoring his existence is going to involve taking certain actions now. And what that suggests to him is that if he has to actually talk to Evan just to tell him to fucking stop, then that’s okay. He might have to. And if he’s on the phone with Evan or seeing his messages appear online or face-to-face with him, pretending Evan doesn’t exist and giving him the silent treatment is STILL going to mean he’s sending a message to Evan. So he might as well send a verbal message. If he has to.

Jared feels a lot less tense about an hour after his shower and his drink. He’s a little on edge when his mom gets home and he becomes very aware of the fact that his ma is going to fill her in on what happened and on the vague information Jared’s finally provided: an acknowledgement that he and Evan aren’t talking, that something happened to break their friendship, that Evan’s tried to call Jared, and that Jared’s still upset about Evan. He knows they know he’s cagey as hell about the things that really bother him, and he knows they’re going to grab on to even the smallest scraps that are wrung from him.

So he retreats to his room pretty early and tries to block things out for a while. Puts on his headphones, plays an open-world game for an hour, then watches forty minutes’ worth of compilations of physics glitches from a skating game just to make himself smile. He then indulges in a slightly-guilty pleasure and reads fanfic until he’s starting to get a little tired—which is only around eleven.

He strips down completely and climbs into bed.

He’s had, like, so many crises over Evan in this bed, and somehow more than once his pillow was a casualty.

The first time, obviously, was the night after he and Evan fought, after Jared realized he’d been in love with Evan right as Evan turned into someone he didn’t recognize at all. He liked when he got to see Evan be a dick, yeah, but that had been completely new and different. It wasn’t an instance of more-similar-to-Jared-than-most-people-would-give-Evan-credit-for dickishness brought on by the ease and familiarity they felt around each other. It was something crueler than that. Jared’s heart had plummeted when Evan spat that pointed “SO” at him, mocking him, the way Jared sometimes imitated Evan’s Anxiety Voice, now fired back in this rage that was seemingly coming from nowhere and that chilled Jared’s whole body even before Evan went for the fucking throat and said it, said what Jared never wanted to hear, that Evan knew Jared had nobody else.

As Evan turned Jared’s empty threat into this reverberating dismissal of everything Jared had to give him or had ever given him, what Jared felt and saw and heard from Evan amounted to nothing but contempt. And he knew right then what the aching, choking sensation was, what the desperation was, because fuck, he’d known for a while without even realizing. And for once in their lives Jared’s reaction was one of pure honesty. The immediate collapse onto the verge of tears. The four simple words he managed before he turned and fled from Evan before he could be broken down any further.

The way he’d cried that night, alone in his bed, staring up at the dark ceiling as this physical, brokenhearted ache swelled in waves—it was somehow worse than the way he’d cried while seeking refuge in the bathroom across from the orchestra’s practice room. He’d burst into tears once again and just kept crumbling until he was fighting to keep his sobbing inaudible, back arching up off the mattress with the effort, breaths wheezing and scraping, deteriorating until he was gagging pathetically on his own spit. So he’d rolled over and shoved his face in his already-damp pillow, crying all his tears and snot directly onto it. 

He’d cried for at least two hours before finally passing out, and the next morning everything was a mess. He woke up all stuffy and sticky and in desperate need of a half dozen cough drops, and his pillowcase had all these stiffened patches on it, and he felt underneath it to find out that the pillow itself did too, and then he remembered Evan, and he reeled. His mom was still home, and he hadn’t skipped at all yet, and his voice really did sound like he’d swallowed a handful of rock salt and then thrown it back up, so he got to stay home because he actually was so fucked up that he didn’t even need to put on an act to give his unwellness some verisimilitude. When his mom left to run errands, Jared put his pillow through the laundry and collapsed on the couch, watching some cooking show and trying so, so, so hard to stop hoping Evan would text him.

And the other time he’d had to secretly wash his pillow was only about a month and a half later. Evan was still very much on his mind, though the emotions had evolved into something that was both bitterer and more longing. And what happened is that he’d woken suddenly out of this very vivid sex dream about Evan, and in the drunkenness of his barely-conscious state, was scarcely aware that he was no longer in the dream, and certainly had no grasp on the fact that the recent state of things between them was no longer what had been the default for over a decade. All he did was shift unsteadily into a kneeling position, wedge the pillow between his legs, and clumsily push his hand down the front of his pants. 

Maybe he just would’ve been able to just collapse and drift back off again in a matter of minutes, but instead when he finished it was not only jarringly intense, but also one of those rare times that it was...kind of a mess. It woke him up the rest of the way and he slowly began to process what, exactly, had just happened. 

It wasn’t like it was the only time he’d jerked off to Evan—there was this one memorable occasion during junior year when Evan had called Jared to say that hey, sorry, but his mom got held up and he needed a ride back from the park, he’d give him five bucks for the gas, could Jared do it? And Jared would’ve let himself be talked into it anyways, and he drove over and texted Evan until he was able to zero in on his friend’s location: up a tree, of course. Evan liked doing that. Sitting up on a sturdy branch, out of anyone’s reach, above anyone’s line of vision, amongst the leaves whispering in a gentle breeze, looking out at it all and seeing for miles. He’d texted Jared that he saw him before Jared was able to spot Evan, so Jared had just shouted “Shut up” and followed the sound of Evan’s laugh.

All that had happened was that Jared got to Evan’s oak tree, looked up to where Evan was perched at least twenty-five feet off the ground and told him to get his ass down here, and pulled himself up onto the lowest large branch, only seven feet up—right on the brink of Jared’s comfort zone with heights. He straddled it and gripped this nearby branch for balance and he looked up at Evan and noticed that the early evening lighting was very flattering, and then he noticed the flexed muscles of Evan’s thighs when he crouched on a branch, then noticed his arms as he lowered himself down with the surest grip and this look of intent focus on his face, and he noticed that he himself was clenching his legs against the branch between them, and his face went red and he looked away and pretended to have an onset of coughing as Evan reached his level and dropped to the earth.

He was a little tense on the drive to Evan’s house, and he made a half-reluctant excuse when Evan invited him to hang out, and he went home and told himself that he was just extra horny today, and he liked boys, and the fact that it was Evan who’d gotten him this riled up was just a coincidence. And with that justification in mind, he’d focused on the memory of watching Evan climbing down from the tree. He was just taking care of himself, no big deal.

But that other, half-accidental occasion left him sitting there in his bed, his hand totally and pillow partially soaked, slowly realizing he’d just gotten off to the idea of sitting on the face of the guy he practically hated now. And he suddenly felt kind of sick, and the reality of what’d happened was there in this wetness against his thighs and the growing stickiness of his fingers and the aftershocks in his body making him shivery and short of breath. It would’ve been totally awesome if he wasn’t afraid that this made him somehow awful. Like, maybe his rage at Evan was manifesting via his imagination in some weird, possessive power trip? He didn’t WANT Evan to come near him, much less touch him, and so this must be about something else, and he didn’t want to think about that. In fact, he couldn’t be sure whether it’d be worse if it was some fucked up fantasy about humiliating and controlling Evan or if he actually did still want Evan a little bit.

Instead of thinking about it, he’d gotten up and taken a shower, washed his pillow again, got only fifty more minutes of sleep, and spent the school day exhausted and unhappy, his determination to avoid Evan reinvigorated—he’s always at least been glad he hadn’t figured things out soon enough to have this whole agonizing period of conscious sexual frustration over Evan, because it was bad enough as is.

His whole bedroom feels different now than it did before he went away to college. Every time he’s come home on break, it’s actually taken him a while to get used to lying in the bed he’s slept in for the past fifteen or so years. He’d never cried and rarely masturbated in his dorm room, luckily for his roommate. And Evan himself had never set foot in his dorm, whereas Evan had been all over THIS bedroom, even in the bed with Jared.

Ever since finally figuring out the extent of his feelings for Evan right as he got his heart torn out and stomped on, Jared has, in these moments of weakness, thought about Evan being in bed with him again. But it’s not the kind of thing that’d make him get up at four in the morning to get his mess out of his pillow. It’s just this warm, quiet idea. 

This warmth and quiet that he’s never felt from anything outside this imagined moment.

He’ll lie flat on his back and think of Evan on top of him. Kind of on his elbows and knees, curled in against Jared, their stomachs and chests touching. Feeling most of Evan’s weight pressing down on him. One of Evan’s forearms hooked beneath his nape. The fingers of one of Evan’s hands buried in his hair, scratching lazily behind his ear. Evan’s forehead resting on the pillow, letting Jared tuck his face against Evan’s throat, feel the heat of his skin, breathe in the scent of him. He knows how Evan smells. He’s so nervous about being sweaty that he always applies this generous amount of distinctly-aromaed deodorant and, Jared knows, Evan also rubs himself down with this antiperspirant body powder, and every morning at school you can just smell it on him and sometimes even catch the scent of Evan’s shampoo or his detergent or even just the smell of his body. 

Despite everything, Jared thinks about that sometimes. Pushing his face against Evan’s body, being held by him, wrapping himself around Evan, remaining that close for as long as it takes them to relax further into it and then still just be resting and leaning into each other and being able to connect like that without speaking because god, maybe Jared can’t speak it, but he can put his lips to Evan’s, he can slide his arms around him, he can hide in the crook of Evan’s neck and pull Evan’s body to his own.

If he had just wanted to fuck Evan stupid (which, yeah, he knows by now he definitely kinda did) that would be its own thing to get over, because give him a break—technically the most action he’s ever gotten is STILL that quick, fumbling rush to second base from two summers ago. 

But this idea of a slow, warm kiss, of cuddling up to each other and falling asleep in one another’s embrace—the way he wants that resonates so deep in his very core that it he can’t help but be haunted by this desire.

Right now it’s hard to think about that night he cried his guts out over Evan. That pain has shifted and evolved and grown right along with everything else about him, but all of this mess with the mysterious calls is reminding him that a year and a half is really not that long. He was still grieving when he opened the door to see Heidi. He’s still hurting. And he doesn’t know how he’d react now if that kind of heartbreaking experience was repeated. He doesn’t know if Evan can still hurt him like that anymore—and he’s not exactly interested in giving the universe the chance to show him.

It’s a little easier to think about Evan lying atop him and kissing his face. The exercise is more detached than it once was—the heartache is dulled and the blazing desperation has cooled into embers kept aglow by a quiet longing for things to have been different. He imagines Evan’s full weight grounding him, keeping him tethered to the mattress. Evan’s fingers laced between his. His warm breath washing over Jared’s cheek. 

“SO—“

Evan’s voice, harsh and cruel, cuts through his mind.

Jared presses his lips together and curls his hand into a loose fist. 

He can see it. Evan’s face, only inches from his own, getting even closer as Jared does his best to for once hold his ground, features shifting into this hateful expression that Jared swears he can’t recognize. Evan himself shifted into someone Jared wishes he never knew.

Jared’s encounter with that version of Evan had only lasted a matter of seconds, but it still interrupts and overwrites hours upon days upon years of memories of the Evan that Jared was so deeply familiar with. The one that bowed his head to look at his fidgeting hands, smiled so shyly at unexpected attention, swatted Jared’s arm upon being teased just the right way, rolled his pencil between his thumb and middle finger when nervous, wore the same pair of striped mittens every winter for seven years, knew trees by leaf and bark and branch, swore under his breath, looked all around hallways and classrooms and cafeterias until he spotted Jared—if Jared lets his guard down, he’ll drift through these kinds of soft, detailed memories for a few effortless moments before SO—maybe the only reason you TALK to me, Jared—

—pretending to be a kid who killed himself—

SO—

You don’t have any other friends!

Go ahead, do it—

Jared opens his eyes. The image of a contemptuous, furious, shouting Evan is gone. He uncurls his hand and pulls it onto his chest.

He thinks of a different face. Illuminated on the right by a string of tiny pink lights. Brown eyes meeting his, too close and too focused on him for the moment to be misread. The small but genuine smile that curves his mouth as Jared’s gaze lingers there.

That face had gotten even closer. 

He was kind of cute, which is why it maybe took a little while for Jared to realize he was being flirted with. It flustered him when he finally caught on. But that just made him laugh—made Isaiah laugh. Even when he told Jared his name, Jared hadn’t realized.

“Oh, Isaiah. I really like that name,” Jared had said. He was slightly nervous—his only approaches were “make snarky jokes all the time” or “just shut up” and parties were new and he was even more thrown off—and it was making him honest. It WAS pretty. He liked names that could float out on a gentle breath. 

And maybe the way Isaiah had smiled at that should’ve told Jared, too. But if he was new to parties, he was even newer to being flirted with by a guy, and he was so new to flirting back that it rattled him into this brand new demeanor that was almost Evan-like in its vulnerability.

He’d been lucky. Isaiah was gentle and so ridiculously understanding. After realizing he wanted to kiss him, HOPED to, Jared fidgeted with his plastic cup while they leaned against the wall and chatted for a few minutes until Isaiah looked at him and dropped his head and gave this grin and said that his first kiss with a guy had been his spring semester freshman year—and that he remembered how nervous he’d been.

Jared had immediately flushed hot, but what shook him up more was the fact that any laughing deflection or outright denial faded away before even reaching his throat. He’d just stared at Isaiah, blushed furiously, and finally parted his lips to shakily exhale, aware of his grip on his cup only when it crackled beneath his fingers. 

And Isaiah had smiled again, and with such genuine warmth, and Jared knew he knew they both wanted this, and he wondered how this was happening to HIM, and was this moment really going to keep happening? And he wanted it so much more than he thought he would.

And, maybe in a reflexive attempt at self-sabotage, Jared had said that kissing was all he could do—that he couldn’t even do trying to date, because he was sort of—because he wasn’t ready, because there was this guy and this stuff that had happened and because he’s never even kissed another man and he’s not ready for anything else—and he had sounded so stupid and annoying but Isaiah had just accepted all of it. For some reason that Jared could not comprehend, Isaiah just...wanted to kiss him. To give him his sort-of-first kiss. 

The anticipation alone was so much more intoxicating than the drink in his hand. He couldn’t believe he wasn’t backing out or ruining it somehow. But there they were—it wasn’t some isolated corner, some hidden room, they were right out in the open, but they were standing in this small hallway, out of the flow of people moving through one doorway into the next, essentially unseen, in this almost-private little bubble.

Isaiah moved even closer than Evan had. Jared’s heart was beating almost as hard as it had when Evan had gotten in his face. But it was so utterly, deeply different. It was a warm hand sliding gently up his arm. A slow, easy approach, meant to draw him in. And Jared had been rendered nearly immobile, but in the very last few seconds he moved forward that last inch and a half. He did that. He wanted it, and chose it, and he did it, and he got it—he had it.

Jared had liked it so, so much. He’d been undeniably scared right up until their lips finally met and then everything was all warmth and connection and this safe, thought-banishing sensuality. Isaiah’s fingers brushed his jawline and then he cupped the side of his face and Jared was melting into it so quickly, knees shivering, weight shifting forward. 

It went on for a good five minutes before Jared had to take a moment to breathe and compose himself. And then he went right back for more, goddamnit, because he WANTED it, and for once he could actually HAVE it, and it was good and safe and he was completely thrown by how crushingly, perfectly lovely it all felt. 

He’d put his hand on Isaiah’s shoulder as Isaiah touched his neck and slowly rubbed his arm and Jared knew that for once he’d made a right decision. And every few minutes they’d draw back for a break, just far enough apart that their noses kept brushing, and Jared was looking at someone’s face so close to his own, and feeling no fear or pressure at all. And then Jared would decide he definitely wasn’t done yet and they’d reconnect and Jared wanted nothing more than for every atom of his body to soak in this feeling that was overwhelming every part of him that felt bad or inadequate or tense or torn up.

He’d found his way back to his dorm room eventually, reluctantly—Isaiah had been first to leave actually, being drawn away by friends who needed a ride home, and Jared hadn’t been heartbroken—he was so high on the kissing and he’d really meant it that he knew he wasn’t ready for anything more. But god, his first kiss with a guy, this sweet good-looking guy who was totally cool with Jared being neither sweet nor good-looking—for some reason, this had happened, and GOD it had been good.

It had been so good that Jared was still buzzing from the memory of it as he laid in bed and stared at the dimmed panel of curtain-filtered streetlight floating against the ceiling. He’d known his roommate was gone for the whole weekend, visiting home; he’d scooted his feet up and slid his hands down into his boxers and for the first time in ages he let himself breathe as hard and deep as he needed to.

He didn’t sleep it off—when he woke up the next day and remembered everything, it hit him like such a triumph that it pushed this effervescence through every nerve in his body and he almost made up his mind to call his moms and come out. But he thought about it for a second and it became pretty obvious that maybe that wasn’t the best idea—it’d be something like, hi, so I kissed a boy last night, and then I fucked myself while thinking about that and it was, like, TOTALLY a top three orgasm, also I’ve been basically certain I like guys for a while now even though I’ve never had a boyfriend, but I wanted someone to be my boyfriend except he broke my heart, and I mean, sometimes I’ve gotten a little flustered around a girl, I don’t know, it wasn’t so bad that time I made out with one at summer camp and felt her up a little but I don’t know, I guess like, if I happen to be feeling it and there’s a strap-on involved between the two of us somehow, maybe—y’know, it’s whatever—but god, like, fuck me but I love guys—

Also, he still couldn’t transcend that inability to share anything personal and real with his parents. It still just...didn’t feel right. He was excited, even thrilled, and he desperately wanted to tell someone close enough to him to be truly appreciative—but he didn’t have that anymore, so he just texted a couple of chill friends he’d met in his literature class instead. 

He didn’t end up with a boyfriend, he didn’t end up with anything more than a good half hour of kissing in this hallway, but it was still better than anything else. No anger, no disgust. He was only pulled closer and kissed deeper.

He can remember that still. The time someone moved their face closer to his than Evan had, and had looked at him in a way that made him feel like he existed in a different universe than the one in which Evan bore down on him and tore him to shreds. Jared hadn’t thought anybody would look at him like that until Isaiah did. Staring right at him, knowing they were about to kiss, but still looking like he wanted it, like he LIKED Jared—

Maybe he’d been wrong, maybe he should’ve been repulsed by Jared, but that’s not what happened. What happened was brilliant, and Jared still has this. It’s gentler, it doesn’t intrude on Jared’s imagination like Evan’s rage does, but if he focuses, he can always bring it back. Draw it softly in until it covers up everything else. A warm mouth pressing against his, gentle fingertips grazing his hair, breath shifting softly across his skin.

Evan couldn’t keep that from him. He can’t keep it from him now.

A night’s sleep DOES make the second phonecall seem less horrifying. It was really just the stress from being caught off guard in the moment. He’s not afraid of Evan. And he’s not going to let Evan put him through anything again. 

He’s changed since all that. Yeah, maybe he feels kind of stranded in between that and whatever uncertain point he’s heading towards, maybe he knows he’s still sort of a mess. But he knows he deserves better. He’s not going to be shouted down and then run away to cry again. Whatever the hell Evan is trying to do, Jared’s not going to let himself be hurt like that anymore. 

He’s not scared of Evan, but he IS stressed with the anticipation of another call, more on edge and frustratingly distracted as the evening approaches and the hour approaches for Evan’s third attempt.

But nothing happens. 

He’s kind of thrown. But after another few hours, he’s relieved. 

The next day he’s still thinking about it—until he’s at work that evening and determinedly NOT thinking about it—but his phone doesn’t vibrate, and when he gets home he doesn’t hear anything about having any messages. This time he’s on the verge of relaxing about it.

When the next evening passes just as uneventfully, Jared knows it must be over. 

He doesn’t love that part of him is kind of disappointed that Evan just called twice and then gave up. It’s pathetic, he knows—part of him is just wishing things were different, part of him is bitter and petty and wants Evan to be hung up on him, part of him hates himself and thinks that of course he wasn’t worth that much to Evan, part of him wants to believe maybe he HAD meant something to Evan that’s even close to the way Evan meant something to him. 

There’s just...a lot. Which is why it was good when he felt like he could just leave it behind him. Accept that it was entirely in the past and focus on moving on.

The next day he looks up from the chipped countertop varnish beside the cash register and sees Evan through the front windows of the gas station.

His heart revs into overdrive like somebody reached right into his chest and tore at a recoil starter. He grabs the edge of the counter, arms already trembling. 

Evan is looking down, presumably at his phone, slowly pacing back and forth along the sidewalk. At any moment he could look inside and it would only take a couple of seconds to see Jared, stationed at the register, trapped—

Evan looks right at him.

Jared is frozen.

“Fuck.” His voice is so weak it barely leaves his mouth.

Evan looks away—not down at a phone, but nervously swinging his head to the side, away, looking out across the parking lot, one hand coming up to tug at the fabric of his shirt.

That wasn’t an accident. This isn’t an accident. Evan knew he was here, Evan came here for him.

Fuck.

This isn’t okay. Jared needs to do something NOW.

His body lags behind, still frozen in place until all at once he wrenches himself away and practically into the hallway leading to the back.

He’s getting these chills and his throat feels closed off again. That invisible grip winding around his trachea, compressing his lungs, choking him off from inside. His ears are ringing.

He pushes through the door and heads into the break room and thank god the shift manager is there.

“Laurie—“ His voice is strange, kind of harsh and rough. “I need to talk to someone for a minute. Can you cover the front for me. I swear I just—just a couple of minutes, I just need to...I have to go outside for a second, it’s—it’s really important.”

She frowns at him.

“Are you alright?” she asks levelly. She always has this delivery that borders on suspicion yet is incontrovertibly matter-of-fact.

Jared goes to nod, but ends up just ducking his head and biting his lip. He realizes he’s BEEN doing that. It’s this distinctly nervous reflex—drawing his bottom lip up behind his teeth, pinning it, dragging it out, quick and automatic.

“...I think so. I’m sorry—just I—just I really really need a minute, real quick, just—it’s really important.”

His arms are shivering from this suppressed adrenal rush. He clutches the doorway harder and chews on his lip and looks at her. She looks back silently, expression unfathomable. 

“Alright,” she says, and moves to get up. “Sure.”

Jared actually nods this time and then propels himself back down the hallway, striding fast. He needs this momentum. Fuck everything, fuck it, he needs to just go outside and do this. Whatever it is. He can’t have Evan coming inside and cornering him, so this is the only thing he can do.

Jared shoves through the front door and the bell rings at him and he wheels around and there’s Evan. 

Evan Hansen is still looking out across the row of parked cars towards the pumps and the street and the strip mall across it—he hasn’t even noticed Jared.

Jared stares at him for a moment and gets this horrible twist of fear? dread? deep in his gut—if he doesn’t do this NOW he’s going to waver and back down and hate himself so much.

But what the fuck do you even say.

“Evan.” 

His voice is still strange.

Evan flinches dramatically, fidgeting hands flying down to his sides even before he whips around to face Jared, half-stepping back with the sudden movement. 

“What are you DOING here.”

Jared stalks forward because he has to, he can’t have a dramatic confrontation in front of his work, he can only have a quick, urgent conversation. So he’s walking towards Evan and goddamn his heart is trying to sledgehammer him off his feet right now, his stupid legs are shaking, his breaths are short and shallow.

Evan still looks exactly like Evan and of course he would, but it’s not just that, it’s this wide-eyed look and the way his lips part and it’s Evan staring back at Jared from five feet away and Jared jerks to a stop, shaking, bitten lip stinging, determined to hold himself together in the face of this and finally send it all away.

“What are you doing here,” he repeats. It comes out shaky but cold.

He’s close enough to Evan and familiar enough with him to hear the quiet stammering of vowels like he’s feeling out a word, building up momentum. Evan shifts from foot to foot, and finally he glances up and then off to the side. To the other side, the other side again, back and forth, gaze occasionally flicking upwards—everywhere but Jared, everywhere but down.

“...You have to leave,” Jared says. He curls a hand into a fist, squeezing his thumb between his fingers. His voice is even more audibly quivering with stress but he doesn’t give a shit. “What are you even—trying to do?”

Evan glances at him once, twice, then blinks rapidly and meets his eyes properly again. He’s playing with the hem of his grey shirt.

“I’m—wanted to see if you were here,” Evan says quickly. His voice is kind of choked, too.

“How’d you even know?” Jared demands.

“Um...” Evan breathes. He tugs at his shirt. “I-I saw you once. Last month. I saw you through the—“ He gestures vaguely. The next words are pushed out on the crest of an exhale. “Through the window and I knew you worked here and...”

“So you’re stalking me now, or something?”

“No, I’m not stalking you, I just stopped to see if you were here and—“ Evan momentarily squeezes his eyes shut like a wince. “You ARE here...”

“What do you WANT. Why do keep calling me. What are you DOING,” Jared hisses.

Evan tugs at his shirt again and his mouth moves soundlessly.

“A—uh—I wanted to talk to you.” The words rush out.

Jared stares at him. He can feel his expression drawn irrepressibly into a frown. 

He can’t think of what to say.

“I-I want us—I think we should talk,” Evan says, a little steadier. “I called you but I—I didn’t know if you had my contact saved anymore and then I didn’t know if—I didn’t know if you—I figured your mom would tell you but I wasn’t sure and I wanted to try to—I wanted to try a different way to...”

“You want to force me to talk to you?” 

“No—“ Evan’s voice rises a little. “I—see, I didn’t know if you even knew I was calling and so I—“

“I did. I did know you were calling.”

Evan hesitates. Jared is staring him down.

“...I didn’t know if you knew,” Evan continues, slower. “I wanted to...actually see you, and talk to you like this so that we could...um...calling wasn’t working, so I thought I should do it different, and I came here, and...well, I saw you through the window again...”

Jared is at a loss. Evan has him completely, utterly lost.

“...You were gonna stalk me until I talk to you?”

Evan blushes.

“No, I—no. If you don’t want to talk anymore then I’ll—I’m not going to stalk you. I’m just—wanted to ask—“ He trails off into a mumble before drawing a deep breath and letting go of his shirt, arms still stiff at his sides. “DO you want to talk? To—talk with me?”

Jared feels so fucked up that it’s something like nausea.

“Why do YOU want to talk?” he asks.

“Uh...I was, uh, thinking about it this summer and I’ve—I haven’t thought that things were left off right between us. Exactly. ...You know.”

That’s a funny and clumsy and inadequate way to put it. It takes everything Jared has to keep from scoffing or rolling his eyes. He just keeps staring at Evan.

“...I, uh, talked to Zoe,” Evan says.

Good for him!

“And it...it was—was good, and then I talked to Alana, and that went okay too, and I...I thought about talking to you. I really want to talk to you, too.”

“About WHAT? What are you even talking about? Is this something with the—with the project?”

If Evan’s thinking about coming clean or something—

“N-no, it’s just...just talking...” Evan grimaces slightly, trailing off again in that breathy mumble. “It’s just...it’s not the project. That’s, uh, that’s done. I we-went to the orchard, actually, and talked with Zoe, and—“ His voice picks up a little bit and his gaze jumps all over the place but keeps gravitating back to Jared. “And I needed to do that, I think. We both did. Or—it was really, um, helpful at least, talking with her for a minute and seeing the trees and—and talking about the things we needed to talk about but didn’t and I emailed Alana the next week and we said some things too and I just kept THINKING about you and—just—called, and—“

Evan closes his mouth and presses his lips together, now nervously shifting his weight from foot to foot some more. And fucking hell, Jared isn’t sure neither of them aren’t blushing. 

“What are you talking about,” Jared says, slower. “What did you talk to Zoe about that you needed to tell her? Did you...tell her the truth?”

“The truth?”

“The TRUTH,” Jared repeats in exasperation. “About The Connor Project. About CONNOR. The—emails.”

“Oh. Um.” Evan’s back to fidgeting with his shirt, and for the first time he hunches in on himself and drops his head and looks at the ground. “...I already had. I told the Murphys. After we—after the—after you and me had—that fight, I told the Murphys. The truth.”

Jared blinks and almost steps back. He’s hit with even more of a chill, but somehow the shock of this is making his limbs more relaxed.

He’s only met the Murphys that one time and he’s only briefly encountered Zoe by virtue of them both hanging around Evan in the halls, but god he never wanted anybody to find out about the truth. He doesn’t want them to know what he did.

He struggles to think of something to say but this is just so bewildering.

They weren’t even supposed to make it such a huge thing—just to say Evan and Connor were friends like they thought, back up Evan’s dumb mistake with a handful of positive emails, and let it all die down. But Evan made the project and everything happened and they DID make it such a huge thing and the Murphys were never ever supposed to find out and Jared—he was in it from the start—

“...What?” is all he finally manages. 

Evan shifts uncomfortably.

“I—I had to tell them,” he says to the sidewalk. “My letter was online and e-everything was falling apart and it was—it was worse than if they knew the truth, I had to tell them, I...” And Evan rubs his left wrist across his forehead, a truly rare nervous habit that he’d almost dropped after the time with the cast. “I told them and I—I finally called Zoe a couple weeks ago and sh-she agreed to meet me and we met in the orchard and...”

“You...I thought you were...” Jared says before he can help it. “Shit. I thought you were with Zoe this whole time. I thought...”

He stops and just shakes his head, staring at Evan’s shirt. Christ.

He knows this is the result of some fucked up conflicted bitterness or jealousy that he’s feeling right now. But thinking about Zoe is also just more of a punch in the chest. She was never supposed to find out about the truth, much less from her BOYFRIEND. And Connor’s parents—just, shit. They must all hate him; Jared honestly never expected to make anyone hate him on this level. But even worse is how much of a blow this must have been for them. It would’ve been bad enough at the start, them finding out about the truth about Evan’s letter. But this—

Fucking hell, Connor DIED. And they just...

“Shit,” Jared breathes. He squeezes his eyes shut a moment and then looks up at the sky, at a total loss.

“It’s—it’s okay,” Evan says quickly. “Well, it’s not, obviously it’s not okay, but...they’re okay. And I met with Zoe and...and she’s okay. So it’s—it’s sort of...all okay.”

Jared is just biting his lip again, heart still thudding away, throat tight. He’s feeling a hell of a lot at once right now, thanks, and if he didn’t already feel so many kinds of betrayed by Evan then that’d probably have intensified, too.

He looks right at Evan, who’s scratching the back of his neck, still staring at the ground.

“...I was never gonna tell anyone about what we did,” Jared says, bitter and tight and cold. “I never DID tell anybody.”

“I didn’t tell them about you.”

Evan looks up as he says it and meets Jared’s eyes. For a moment Jared is sure one or both of them is going to falter away from the other’s gaze, but no one does.

“I didn’t tell anybody about you. Not even—I mean, Alana didn’t ask, Zoe didn’t ask. But I didn’t tell anybody about you.”

Jared’s mouth twitches. His fingers twitch. He blinks a few times.

Holy shit. Okay.

“...It just went really...better than I thought it could. When me and Zoe talked,” Evan continues hesitantly. “And it—I really wanted to talk to you. I’ve...BEEN wanting to talk to you, sometimes, but...”

Jared bites his lip a quick half dozen times in a row.

“Why would you wanna talk to me,” he grumbles.

He knows this bitterness. It’s like the way he felt back then, when it was happening. It’s not exactly the same—it feels different the way HE feels different from how he was back then. Which is to say: somewhat. Slightly.

Evan is murmuring vowels and weak consonants again, groping around for the start of a word.

“What would you want from ME?” Jared specifies. He stares unflinchingly at Evan. He needs this to be understood as the outright challenge it is.

“I don’t...I just want to talk.”

“Why. You know why we’re NOT talking. Why would YOU talk to ME.”

“Be-because,” Evan starts. “I-I think we...we have more we need to say.”

Fucking hell. Jared pinches his lip hard between his teeth. 

“...Are we just supposed to apologize to each other and shake hands or something?” he asks in a low voice. “Because we could do that right here and get it over with.”

Evan exhales audibly.

For a moment Jared’s scattered, racing thoughts jump back to his job—but then, to hell with it, it isn’t like he feels any more loyalty towards it than it does towards him, he’s going back to school in a few weeks, his shift is ending in a few hours, fucking fire him for all he cares.

Evan Hansen’s ghost is right in front of him, solid and different but too much the same and too much like that day in the hallway senior year—

“What happened to the project?” Jared asks sharply. “If you told the Murphys.”

Evan actually looks less nervous at that somehow.

“It—they never told anyone, either,” he answers. “The project just—it just kept going. The orchard was funded a-and Alana made sure everything went ahead and—and nobody else knows. Just us and the Murphys. None of us told anybody.”

“...I never told anybody,” Jared says quietly. He’s repeating himself, he knows, he already realizes this—but here he is still saying it.

Evan nods a little and glances down somewhere around Jared’s knees.

If this apparently has to be happening, there’s one more thing Jared might as well take this chance to ask about. 

“...Why’d your letter get posted?” he says. Again it comes out almost like a challenge—though less intentionally this time. 

“Oh... Uh.”

“I read it. ...And I know you wouldn’t have put something like that online. That was really fucked up, even for you.”

“Wh—I—what?”

“All that shit you said in there, Evan. All that shit you said about nobody even—“ Jared cuts himself off and closes his eyes, rubbing his forehead. “Just...”

He sighs and scrapes his shoe along the cement.

“Why the fuck did that get posted online?” he says, trying to keep his voice measured and low. He lowers his hand and looks at Evan again.

Evan returns his gaze for only half a second or so before looking away.

“It wasn’t supposed to be posted,” he murmurs. “...I showed it to Alana because I couldn’t show her emails as proof anymore.”

That hits Jared like an ice-cold wall of water. It feels like he’s up to his chin in it, the pressure of the water against his throat. He freezes up again.

“I didn’t mean for her to post it, but—well, she did, and then everyone saw. ...And then I told the Murphys the truth.” Evan is fidgeting with the hem of his shirt some more. “Well, but—I didn’t tell them about you.”

Jared stares at him. Hard.

“...Why do you want to talk to me?” he asks again. There’s just this little bit of emphasis on the Me. “This is it. It’s me.” The emphasis again. “It’s just this.”

He gestures loosely to himself. 

“Me.”

Evan looks back at him. His lips move soundlessly as he shifts from foot to foot.

“...What else are we supposed to do?” Jared’s voice is quieted. “Like, we talk or something—and what? What’s supposed to happen. Why would you wanna talk to me now.”

Evan presses his lips together and now he’s looking RIGHT back at Jared with something in his expression that wasn’t there just a moment ago. Something that’s a little more focused and sure and—almost comfortable. Almost like it’s eight years ago and they’re looking at each other as they hang on to the cool metal legs of the swingset, feet in the mulch, charged by the scent carried on the warm spring breeze.

But it’s—

“I want to,” Evan says softly. 

Jared exhales.

“I just want to. I do.”

...Fuck.

Jared searches Evan’s eyes. 

It’s him, real and present, and it’s all up to Jared. He gets to decide. It’s all up to what he wants. If he’ll choose to do this. If he’ll risk putting himself through this.

He knows doesn’t need Evan. He can, and does, live without him.

And it’s that thought that provides him with his answer.

“...I’ll call you tomorrow,” he says. 

Evan blinks and parts his lips.

“I still have your number. I’ll call you, and you can answer, and we’ll...figure out when to meet. Somewhere that isn’t the gas station while I’m supposed to be working here.”

And Evan nods rapidly and he breathes out in that light huff of an exhale that always means stress or relief or a laugh.

Jared folds his arms across his stomach and grimaces slightly.

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow, then.”

Evan nods just as hard as before.

“Y-yeah. Okay.” There’s this little nervous spasm of his arm and then he brings his hands together, wringing his fingers. “That’s great, Jared. I—yeah. Thank you.”

And now Jared nods, slower and subtler.

There’s a few tight, still beats.

“Talk to you, uh, tomorrow,” Evan says, and hesitates, and turns to the side, and then he’s gone.

Jared listens as Evan’s footsteps fade into the background noise of the pumps and the street beyond them. His walk has the same rhythm it always did, with the intermittent percussive scuffing of a shoe’s toe dragging on the ground.

Jared reaches out to his right until his fingertips meet the rough brick side of the building.

Evan wants something, Jared needs nothing, and neither of them have anything to lose.

**Author's Note:**

> if u already read the ghost of evan hansen: i added some nonessential but still maybe worthwhile notes at the end of it jsyk
> 
> ummmwine on tumblr do @ me


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